[caption id="attachment_381445" align="alignright" width="250"] Hahaha.[/caption]Blizzard has replied to some questions, comments, and complaints about how they handled Thursday's Blood Thief/Shards exploit. There was lively debate in comments of our news thread, and lots of angry threads demanding that heads roll have been closed or deleted on Battle.net, but in a couple of cases a Blue had made some sort of reply. Blood Thief Exploit Aftermath: Bans, Rollbacks, and Debate:

Punishment suggestion for exploiters

Since we've all heard about the bloodshard exploit and the possibility of Blizzard banning the exploiters, I would like to propose the correct punishment for them. Reset their accounts completely, in season and non-season:

Lose all paragons

Lose all Characters

Lose all Items

Ban them from current season

Ban their accounts for one week

After said week, let them play again. This way there could be no dispute over value lost, but it will send a strong message to those who would like to continue abusing exploits and the exploiters will surely think twice...

Personally I'd like Blizzard to post a list of the users they, if they ever going to that is, banned. Naming and shaming should be a good deterrent as well.

Tyvalir: Hey guys, I just wanted to share a quick reminder with everyone, since I've seen a lot of threads popping up around this topic.

It's totally okay to share your thoughts and concerns here on the forums. In fact, that's a big part of what people enjoy about them, and an important part of their purpose.

While we welcome friendly and constructive discussions about the game and the community, we draw the line at making derogatory remarks about other players (even when they are made with the best of intentions for the community). These comments can wear away at our sense of community, and create a hostile atmosphere.

If you believe someone was playing the game and using hacks or exploits, rather than make a post about it here, please send an e-mail to [email protected] and include as much detail about the hack or exploit as possible. Thank you!

The reason why naming-n-shaming isn't allowed, is because people will often do this in err, accusing innocent people of things they didn't do.
Tyvalir: The bottom line is that name shaming (of any kind) isn't appropriate for these forums. It doesn't result in constructive dialogue, no matter how well-intentioned an OP might be, and instead works to tear down the community.

If your goal is to report hacks and exploits, or other types of exploitative behavior, there are tools both in-game and outside the game (as referenced in my previous post) which are far better suited to this purpose.

It's interesting that Blizzard has (in recent years) relentlessly promoted people who stream their games, far in excess of any promotion (or even acknowledgement) of their fansites. And there's no policy on Bnet about not linking to or publicizing streamers the rest of the time... but once a bunch of them start pushing some exploit, it's forbidden to mention them or talk about what they did or how they were punished.

As for the issue of punishment, what do you guys think should be done? Here's a vote with the commonly-suggested punishments, arranged in a sort of sliding scale of retribution. Pick the one that most closely aligns with what you think should be done, and hit the comments if you'd like to plead with the mercy of the court, incite more vengeance than a Demon Hunter, or instruct others on the error of their opinions.

I think the rollback was enough amazingly effective. You get to see it with the big exploiters of a certain clan with all of them being either pre 70 or 1-2 paragon lvl 70s.

A lot of these guys were p600+ and they lost all those hours and then some. And it wasn't like they didn't know what they were doing or surprised by it working they did this for hours up hours and were on average 150k more shards than everyone else.

These people will eventually be back to where they were but they definitely lost a weeks worth of work.

I like that suggestion of completely erasing the progress of the people who massively exploited the bug. Having to completely start over with no characters, no paragon levels, no gear, no achievements, and no ability to play this season ... that's the sort of deterrent that would keep people honest in the future when exploits like this "go wide".

I don't think the streamers who publicized it should be punished in the same way, unless they also abused it heavily.

The reality is that this bug was known and reported during PTR and Blizzard, as is their habit, left it in the game and basically bet the integrity of this season on it not becoming widely known.

It seems more and more in recent years that the only way to get Blizzard to address broken mechanics like this is to make sure as many people as possible know.

If someone streams how an exploit is done he or she is a publicizer. Clear as day, no questions about it. Same if they write a post about it on any forums. I don't consider the spreading of information that undermines the leaderboards or the idea of fairplay a community service, just the opposite in fact. Blizzard has a dedicated email address for these kinds of things for a reason.

It seems like Blizzard rolled back some people, and banned others. Not sure why this inconsistent approach was taken. I'm thinking of Mannercookie in particular here - getting banned for presumably the shard exploit while the DNA clan gets rolled back only?

Not sure I understand the need for two different levels of penalties. I'm not an MC fan or anything like that, but he was one of the few HC streamers and produced content of some value at least.

In my opinion, should their characters to be deleted, they know what they're doing
and no matter how many hours they have spent and what they will lose, it's the only way to get rid of the kind of guys. In the old days people lost everything when they were found cheating in one way or another

I hate to say it, but (some) of you are sick... You need to take a good look at yourselves before thinking about punishing others. Blood Shard bug abuse, or any bug abuse, especially in D3 is a victimless 'crime'. So why should there be punishments?

The people calling out for radical punishments & public naming are the picture perfect example of one of the major wrongs with so called human civilization. Communities love to inflict public harm on others using the mantra of 'justice'. This is why there will always be Nazi like institutions popping up somewhere. Someone does something that you don't like based on principal, so you give someone else powers to enforce the moral code. Next thing you know, YOU'RE the one on the receiving end of 'justice'.

Think about it, people. It doesn't amount to a hill of beans here, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if given the opportunity, people voting like this here in this gaming forum would also vote/support similar measures in the real world.

I am in total agreement with what you said. In the other post I commented that I think the whole thing is Blizzards fault and players shouldn't be punished since the exploit didn't hurt anyone's game, since ROS has a closed economy. This whole mess was just a black-eye for Blizzard and they needed a whipping boy, and the community is ok with blaming the wrong party, as long as they get their sense (as you put it) justice.

Not to derail the topic but you are so right about how people act in masses.

Is a little surprised that so many defenders exploited the Blood Shard trick?
as well as accusations Blizzard for it.
In the old days, people used maphack and other tricks that will dudes then claim it is also blizzards fault that it was possible and it is their programming that is causing it. Either way, there are people who will cheat at any cost and therefore must pay a price period!

Is a little surprised that so many defenders exploited the Blood Shard trick?
as well as accusations Blizzard for it.
In the old days, people used maphack and other tricks that will dudes then claim it is also blizzards fault that it was possible and it is their programming that is causing it. Either way, there are people who will cheat at any cost and therefore must pay a price period!

ADest, I agree partially with what you have to say with regards to shaming and abusing people.

But, cheating during seasons is NOT a victimless crime. There are people sinking hours of their lived into this game with the hopes of coming out on top. To have their chances, for winning the number 1 position, lessened by a cheat is unfair to them. No one should have an advantage via cheats.

So, while I agree that public shaming, naming and blaming is a negative thing. Action against cheaters, and which action should be taken, IS an appropriate topic for daiblo forums during a ladder season.

I'll admit, I forgot about seasons when I originally posted, and their leaderboards. Still, because this was a bug and not a hack, they did have to put quite a bit of time into actually finding bloodshard goblins. They can't be found in Greater Rifts. That was time spent away from gem leveling and the like.

Bloodshards are also capped, so they have to actually stop and gamble at regular intervals. They couldn't just farm up 100k worth of shards as some posters have suggested, go to Kadala, and repeat instantly. I would say a rollback of the leaderboards would be sufficient, as it was the only part of the game potentially affected. The right thing to do (and what Blizzard had done in the past) would have probably been to just fix the bug.